Movie Review: Captain America: The Winter Soldier

With friends and family we spent our Saturday afternoon checking out the most recent entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

First and most important point – I found the 3D to be pretty useless. The picture was very dim and hard to see in some points, and although the muted colours may have been intentional, I see no reason anyone should pay the extra couple of bucks to see the film that way.

Secondly – I really liked this movie! Although I suppose I could have done some reading into the original comics before going in, I tried to shy away from spoilers and see the film clean – not something I can do with a lot of comic book-based films as I’m pretty familiar with a lot of the stories, but with the heavier workload in Grad school for the last couple of months I was able to stay away, for the most part.

(A Quick Side-note – I am more than a little annoyed at the Marvel special “Marvel: Assembling a Universe” which aired in the regular timeslot of the TV series Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. last month – not only did it ruin the big spoil of the film, but it totally didn’t have to. Sometimes it’s nice to keep the mystery)

Trying to avoid spoilers, the film focuses on how S.H.I.E.L.D. has changed in a post-The Avengers world, a world where an alien invasion could literally come out of nowhere, and Captain America’s reaction to these changes. A huge part of what I love about the character is that his 1940’s era mindset doesn’t mean he’s naïve, it just means he looks at things a little differently.

The film didn’t quite measure up to the first one for me (Sorry, but the first film was my surprise favourite film of 2011), but I loved the 70s conspiracy movie feel and some of the fight scenes were pretty fantastic.

In the end, much of the movie rests on the character of Steve Rogers (Captain America, played by Chris Evans) and his ability to balance an incredibly jingoistic concept with a character you would really like as a friend, and in that way, as with the first film, the movie succeeds quite nicely.

Definitely worth seeing on the big screen, but again, stay away from the 3D unless you have no choice.

Genre Character of the Week: Steve Rogers

On Monday I went with my mother, brother, oldest niece, nephew, and youngest daughter to see Captain America: The First Avenger.

I really liked this movie.

It’s kind of funny, as the Superhero genre has had a pretty big summer this year, that the two films I was least interested in to start, this one and Thor, actually came out well ahead of the others.

The movie is great and honestly this comes down to just a few things:

1) Chris Evans, seriously, he really had me invested in the character quite early, and after finding out that he didn’t use a body double for the “before” part of his character (instead it was some pretty amazing CG), I was even more impressed. As cocky as he was as Johnny Storm in the Fantastic Four movies, he is earnest, kind, and decent in this role.

2) The story focuses on character development – yes there is a lot of connections to the modern Marvel universe (Thor-related items, Howard Stark, etc.), but the focus in the film is very strongly placed on the characters.

3) I loved the relationships Steve had in the film, from his best friend Bucky, to the love interest and especially to the doctor who decides to take a risk on this kid.

Seriously, the film felt like a wonderful throwback to the great pulp classics, but as it had a nice storyline on its own it didn’t look like a series of set pieces waiting for action sequences (and yes, I’m looking at you Green Lantern).

Honestly, this movie was great, and as I said before, a huge part of that goes to the character of Captain America himself, Steve Rogers.